Hero
by unset city
Summary: The Batman could never be a hero without the villain, the one who helped make him, that clown with the forever smile...


Batman was not a hero

_Hero_

_Disclaimer: I do not own Batman or the Joker_

Batman was not a hero.

He saved lives, but he also took them away; he stopped crimes, but he only created more of them. No matter what there was always a dark side, a lethal twist. He was not a hero, and he had long since stopped believing that he was one.

Before the Joker he really had thought he'd been a hero, had really though he'd helped Gotham. What a sad, delusional thought that was now, as the world burned around him as looked helplessly on.

Yes, he was helpless—dreadfully so. He found it hard to stop things anymore, especially the things _he_ did; The Joker, the one who had inevitably brought about his downfall, even if the madman did not quite know it. The Joker had already won long ago, back when Rachel had been incinerated, back when that dreadful night had distorted the white knight of Gotham's brain. That was the night when the Batman had truly fallen, the darkest night that there could have possibly been as the smoke had curled up towards the dark sky, as the bright flames of hell had consumed the building, the good, stained the white…

And although the Batman kept fighting, he was never the same. The man inside of him behind that mask, buried beneath that suit and hiding behind all those gadgets, was dead, dying of an internal wound that could to be fixed, his soul…his soul burning in the flames that had killed him. All on that night…

Only one thing, in sense, made him a hero. Although Batman was really in tatters, although his reputation now matched the dark color that he wore, one thing still saved him, one being still lifted him up and protected him from the darkest side of society, from the complete wrath of the police force. And that being, that person, was ironically the same one who had darkened him, destroyed him, in the first place—the Joker.

Batman was always there to stop him, that mad clown with the permanent smile intent on causing so much chaos that the world threatened to crack from it. Batman was always there to save Gotham from his clutches, and through it, he received the label as a hero as he had before, no matter how weak the sense of that word was now.

Defeating the Joker made him a hero, and so…He wanted to keep it. Batman might not care about what he was labeled, but Bruce did. He was tired of running from the police, tired of causing only more crime, more robberies and malice in the world. The Joker made him feel as though he were something great again, something extraordinary and superb just as it had been before, before the darkness had crept in like sleeping gas, like some poison that wore the face of a clown.

The Joker's face taunted him yet saved him, his plans the Batman's downfall as well as his savior.

To be hero in black, if only for the time being…

He could never pass it up, and never did. The Joker, he had come to realize, did complete him in the sense of how opposite they were, in the sense of how different their goals were. Good and evil, black and purple…The Batman could never be the hero without the Joker.

And so, when the day came that his enemy was finally captured not by him, but by the police, the Batman was falling again, Gotham city once more resenting him now that the threat he always took care of was off the streets. And Batman was no longer needed again…

And Bruce, try as hard as he could, could not let his masked other alias go. The Batman had become frighteningly a part of him, too big of a part to ever be ignored, and so the dark vigilante needed to live, needed to roam the darkness, needed to save…

And the Joker was the only one that could make him that hero again.

And so, being the hero that he was not the Batman had gone to the police station, cloaked in darkness, masked in sin, and had taken down the guards, the officers he had long ago allied himself with, to free his worst enemy.

He knew that it was wrong, and as the Joker cackled in glee in his ear, he realized what he was doing, but…but he no longer cared. He was not a hero, so why should he have a sense of morals? He was good, yet he wore black, the color of evil; how warped it was, almost as perverse as the Joker when he thought of it, thought of his enemy in his bright clothes, wearing his cheery painted face with that under layer of true wickedness. Their appearances both spoke little for their true selves, and made them all the more melded together, stuck in this world where good and evil were obscure, where chaos really was at its highest form.

And chaos was what plagued Batman as he let his enemy go, cackling and smiling that eternal smile as he scampered away. And it was only the Joker's words, heard through that infernal, hellish laughter, which put the Batman's mind at ease.

"I'll see you later, Bats."

And then everything fell back, somehow though the smoke and chaos and destruction, top how it was supposed to be:

With Batman as the wayward hero and the Joker as the diabolical villain, both existing side by side, anarchy and order.

The Batman was not a hero—he was just a man looking to become one.

_What'd you think? Sorry if it's odd, I'm an odd person, hahaha. Please Review! _


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